Ladytron Is Still Perfecting Its Synth-pop Sound

Liverpool is famous for birthing one musical Fab Four, but the British port city also gifted the world another talented quartet in Ladytron, an electro act that has been bringing bodies onto the dance floor for 25 years now.

"I was working on music in Liverpool in the late '90s with various people," Daniel Hunt of Ladytron tells New Times. "I was a DJ at that time and started some popular and influential parties in the city. I met Helen Marnie at one of those club nights; Mira Aroyo was introduced to me by a mutual friend. Everything I had been doing before that point was a prototype and one-off experiments. Once they both joined, we became Ladytron."

With a look inspired by the 1971 sci-fi film The Andromeda Strain and a streamlined synth-pop sound, the band mixed style and substance and earned a devoted following. Ladytron never cracks a smile nor arches an eyebrow, but with songs like "Seventeen," whose only lyrics are "They only want you when you're 17/When you're 21/You're no fun/They take a Polaroid and let you go/Say they'll let you know/So come on" repeated ad nauseam over an infectious beat, you could take them as seriously as you needed to as they soundtracked your late night.

Ladytron's latest album, 2023's Time's Arrow, shows that the band hasn't lost its touch. Right from the opener, "City of Angels," with Marnie's otherworldly vocals immersed in a wall of sound, you're immersed in the Ladytron aura.

"It already feels so long ago," Hunt says about making the record. "We never really had obvious or direct musical influences. The strongest inspirations are subconscious. I think that's why we are still making records today."
The moody ambiance of "Sargasso Sea" is a track Hunt is particularly proud of.

"I had the chord sequence come to me while I was offshore in a boat on holiday in Bahia," he explains." At first, the sequence bothered me as it didn't seem to have an ending. I was worried that it never would and that I would be trapped humming it for eternity. Once the chord sequence resolved itself, I breathed a sigh of relief and recorded it as a voice note on my phone."

He continues, "Some years later, I started programming it with a primitive drum machine, distorted bass, and synth strings — very minimal. There, it stayed for some years until we were making Time's Arrow. I sent it to Helen to experiment with vocal ideas, and she came up with a melody over the first few chords. I took that melody and expanded it into an idea that fit over the whole sequence, then finally wrote lyrics for it. It was thus the first track started and final completed for the album."

Hunt and the rest of Ladytron are solving the musical puzzles to create another record, but first, the band is hitting the road, including a rare South Florida performance at Culture Room on Monday, August 26. It'll be the band's first performance in the Sunshine State since a gig at the long-departed Grand Central in 2011.

"It's always a blend of older and newer material, and we have a specially created audiovisual show by artist Sam Wiehl, who has designed some of our cover artwork over the years," Hunt says.

He doesn't have any particular rituals before he takes the stage; instead, he avoids socializing.

"There are things I avoid, such as meeting friends before the show or going for dinner with them — both are accursed," he says.

Ladytron. With Danz CM. 7:30 p.m. Monday, August 26, at Culture Room, 3045 N. Federal Hwy., Fort Lauderdale; cultureroom.net. Tickets cost $35 via ticketmaster.com.